


Faces and Masks

by galacticproportions



Series: The Ripening Stars [2]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Action and intrigue, Consent with a Force user seems like it would be very complicated, Ethical Dilemmas, F/M, I love that there's an Ethical Dilemmas tag, M/M, Masturbation, Other, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-29 06:33:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6363334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galacticproportions/pseuds/galacticproportions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finn and another deconditioned stormtrooper infiltrate a First Order space station. Rey and Poe Dameron are part of the escape plan if it works--and the strike force if it doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Faces and Masks

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to Decision Days. I think you can read it alone, but you'll probably have a better time (especially with the OCs) if you read them both. 
> 
> Eya is a guest from thebrotherswinchester's lush, lovely story "Tell Me About the Big Bang." I think the way I write Luke's voice owes a lot to leupagus's life-ruining "To the Sky Without Wings."
> 
> Once again, thanks to lynx-eyed beta reader and beloved fanfic enabler Nevanna.

It was a wonder the blaster-scarred, space-dented little ship had made it as far as the space station. Its tech was almost too old to dock properly and the stormtroopers working the docking bays had to jerry-rig the state-of-the art couplings to accommodate it. The two stormtroopers who stumbled out didn't seem to be in much better shape than the ship. Over the comm they'd given their designations, explained that they were survivors from Transport 419C (previously filed as "lost with all hands in the Cytelian system") and that their last known destination had been this space station. Naturally, troopers took them into custody immediately and marched them (separately) to meet ranking officers for debriefing.

This is the part that Finn is least worried about. He and XP-0193 have checked and double-checked their story, including the misinformation about Resistance plans and movements in the nearby systems that the General's intelligence staff decided would be best to feed to the First Order. They've made sure their accounts have enough innocent-sounding discrepancies so it won't sound like they made them up and memorized them (which, of course, they did) while keeping the main information the same. They have three more things in their favor: the story really is XP-0193's story up to a point, XP-0193 is the one whose former unit might be on this space station, and XP-0193 doesn't speak aloud. It's hard to catch someone in a lie if the way they tell the truth is unfamiliar to you.

That leaves Finn as the weak point in more ways than one. Not only is he not TS-2284, the fellow deserter and deconditioned stormtrooper whose uniform he's wearing; he's a wanted man. The Resistance took the chance that the station wouldn't be running biometric data, and so far so good--he'd already be in handcuffs on his way to an interrogation chamber. But every interaction for the next ten days, when (if everything goes perfectly, which seems vanishingly unlikely) his ride out will show up, will be a tightrope walk over a plasma drive. 

The officer debriefing him isn't one of the ones the real TS-2284 named to him, but they're high-enough ranking that they have a name, Orris, and they stop him in the middle of his third retelling. "Enough," they say. "I'll submit my report to Captain Barca. He may want more details about the failure of 419C and the lay of the land in that sector." Barca's still alive, Finn notes. "Don't get too comfortable, but for now you can report to--"he flicks fingers over his datapad-- "the 21 Barracks, they have a free bunk, and start sanding down that armor, it looks like shit." 

"This is my first time on a station, sir," Finn says in TS-2284's voice, at the top of his range and with a little strain in it, and drawing on TS-2284's biography. "What's the quickest way to the barracks?"

"One of the troopers on the door will take you. And drop by medbay tomorrow to update your vaccinations and your contraceptive shot. Dismissed, trooper." 

They walk together to a lift, Finn's footsteps falling into rhythm with XP-9905's as though he'd never been away, and his shoulders high and anxious under the armor. He knows that the two units often worked together and hopes this isn't someone he's supposed to have met, but they give no sign of recognition. Chitchat isn't exactly encouraged outside the barracks, which are arranged around the outer torus of the station--if there's an attack, the First Order want expendable personnel to be first in the line of fire. Rage boils up in him and he tries to breathe it off, to note the rest of the layout, vulnerable points, power sources, people's movements. To do what he's here for, or part of it. He says to his guide, "You got a sander and varnish I can use?"

"Sorry, I'm in the 27--my stuff's all the way up there." A woman's voice, almost certainly. "Somebody in the 21'll have some." Normal, unsuspicious. The kind of interaction he'd had every day of his life until recently. He's simultaneously relieved and depleted, and then the lift stops and they step into the 21 Barrack, and memory and misery come crashing down. 

It looks the same; it smells the same. The bunks are the bunks where he cried, jacked off, wrestled with growing disquiet, collapsed exhausted, nursed bruises, occasionally actually slept. The sweat-and-plasteel smell, the echo of steps on the metal grid floor: he feels like he's falling through time. XP-9905 sketches an ironic salute, which he just barely remembers to return before the lift door closes, and he's alone with the past and the immediate future. He takes off his helmet and breathes, and breathes, and breathes. He holds to Rey's face, Poe's face.

He puts his helmet back on. That's another problem, maybe the worst one. The barracks are one of the few places on a First Order vessel, and he assumes on a First Order space station, where the helmets can come off. Nobody would wear one of those things for even a second if they didn't have to, conditioning or no conditioning. But any one of these soldiers might recognize him. They wouldn't even have to be all that loyal to the First Order to turn him in; he presumes they know about the losses at Starkiller Base. And even if they don't know him, they might know the person he's supposed to be by sight--probably do, if they served with them for any length of time. The two of them don't look anything alike. 

He breathes. He thinks of the real TS-2284--Tiesse now--helmetless and in civilian clothes, braids tight and greased, dredging up from their battered mind the information he needed, so he could pretend to be them just long enough to free someone else. 

 

*

Rey does her 50th right-arm pushup, switches arms, does 50 more, does a series of squats, climbs back into the TIE fighter and says, "Your turn." Poe groans, emerges, descends to the deck of the little freighter thinly disguised as a First Order transport, and bends to stretch his hamstrings. 

One or the other of them is in the TIE fighter at all times, because everything about this plan could go to shit in a heartbeat, and they need to be ready to go now now now. The other two teams--the veteran Eya Mosse and Iolo in one, Karé Kun and a rookie called Lane in the other--are doing the same, but they're a little more lax about it, especially since Eya's doubling as the freighter's pilot. On this, their first day in place, neither Poe nor Rey has yet been more than five feet from the TIE fighter unless one of them's using the fresher. They take turns exercising and eating; they take turns sleeping in their respective seats, back to back while the other keeps watch. 

They're in a concavity on the far side of one of the three large, roughly equidistant asteroids whose mutual gravity the First Order space station uses to keep itself upright and balanced--pretty clever, really, except that it makes for such good cover for a would-be rescue team. They haven't been hailed, and though the station could be playing a long game, Poe's willing to believe they weren't spotted on the approach. He knows Eya's that good. She walks up now and joins him at his routine, matching his motions easily, though she's not far short of fifty. Her short fuzz of hair is graying but her face is unlined, and unfretted with effort as she lunges, twists, punches the air. 

They bow ironically to each other when they're done, and she walks around to knock on the transparisteel of the gunner's cockpit. "Rey, the air filters on this bucket need changing again and it's a four-handed job. You'll have plenty of time to get back if we get the alert." Rey climbs down, looking anxious and mulish at the same time, and Poe takes his seat in the fighter again and thinks about Finn and wishes he could use the Force so that Finn could feel his thoughts, his presence, his trust, his ...

People he loves have followed Poe into danger before, or gone there with him, and some of them didn't come back. We-could-all-be-dead-tomorrow sex is practically the official Resistance pastime, but the people he lost weren't just bedmates--or squadmates or drinking companions or advisors or people he owed his life to or people whose lives he'd saved. They were all of those. They were his friends. They took a little of him down with them each time, but he's still flying, in their names now as well as his own. He tells himself that if he makes it out and Finn doesn't, it'll be the same. Grief, and a renewal of purpose. He's pretty sure it isn't true. 

Rey returns, wiping her hands down the sides of her trousers. "That periscope thing I made is working," she says, meaning the remote sensor arm she built--out of six durasteel washers and spit, apparently--so they can see around the asteroid, monitor activity near the space station, and gather data on its specs and position and vulnerabilities to bring back. If they make it back. "You want to take a walk, check it out?"

"You'll be here?" 

"I'll be here." She settles herself into the gunner's chair again--it's surprisingly comfortable, she wouldn't have expected the First Order to treat themselves to springs and padding--and drops into the timeless time of Force meditation. She wishes she could reach out to Finn, to let him know she's with him, she believes in him, she...

But she can't do that, because she promised him, and more, promised herself, that she would never touch his mind without his permission. When she and Luke left Ahch-To, she was just beginning to feel what she can do, and her breath still catches at the thrill and fear of it. To use that power on someone who trusts her--especially someone who's survived the mindhandling and invasion of self that the First Order seems to make its specialty--no. No. 

It's good to practice, though. She uses her mind to reach around to the back of her head, where a worn-down duraluminum rod holds her hair in place, and eases it out. Her hair flops down in a lopsided mess--she should probably comb it one of these--

"Brought you some dinner," Poe's voice is saying, and her hairstick clatters out of sight between chair and console. She says a few choice words she borrowed from Chewbacca, and sighs, because it's not Poe's fault, and holds out her hand for the ration bars, which he's apparently forgotten he's holding. "What?" she says, knowing she sounds sharp and unable to stop herself. "Is there something--oh, the hair."

"The hair," Poe agrees. His face is grave, but he sounds amused.

"I was trying to see if I could use the Force to do something behind me. I think my hairstick's around here somewhere--" she roots down around the console.

"Can't you use the Force to get it out?"

"I can't move things if I don't know where they are. Balls! I can't feel it. I'll have to make another one."

"You could just braid it," Poe suggests. "Like General Organa does?"

Rey hasn't bothered to make a secret of how she feels about the General. But--"I'd have to comb it," she admits. "I don't think I could braid it, the way it is now." She unwraps a ration bar and takes it out in two bites. "Why are we talking about my hair?"

"So we don't have to talk about anything else," Poe says, and they stare at each other because even that is a little too much of the truth.

*

The debriefing was the first real test. The second comes when the residents of 21 Barrack get off-shift and come flooding through the lift doors. Finn practically laughs with relief when he sees that none of them have either TS or XP designations--they're RLs and RRs, and as far as he can tell none of them know who he is or who he's supposed to be. He gives them the short version, asks about a sander and varnish, is directed to the utility shelves, and sets the sander on low so he can do the next part of what he's here to do: listen. 

What he's listening for, more or less, is a particular note in the voice, something he heard first from Tiesse. He can't describe it, except as a signal that the conditioning of the person--the stormtrooper--speaking is thin in that place. He wonders if he'll even recognize it again from someone else. He doesn't hear it at the moment, in the low-key back-and-forth about rations, about double shifts, about favoritism. The voices of people making small objections because they can't make the big ones. 

Now someone's speaking directly to him, a big-eared child who can't be long out of cadet stage. He cuts the sander. "Say again?" he says in TS-2284's voice.

"You were on 419C when it blew?" she's asking.

"Escape pod," he corrects, since that's the story. "The last thing we saw was the port engines going and after that--" he shrugs. 

"Were you scared?"

"Shitless. But evac drill works." He resists the urge to smile at her. FN-2187 wouldn't have, and TS-2284 probably wouldn't either. 

"Was it as bad as ground combat?"

He's about to say Nothing like as bad, but then he can't remember if TS-2284 was ever in ground combat. It's crucial that he never mixes up their memories with his. Twice, they said, a punishment raid on some moon they didn't remember the name of and some unexpected armed resistance from another planet the First Order had thought they'd subdued. "Neither of them are all that great," he decides to say. "You worried about combat?"

She straightens up into parade-ground posture and lies, "No," and even in that one syllable he thinks he hears the note he's looking for, the possibility. He's about to ask his next question in a slightly different voice, the one that draws out answers people think they're not supposed to give, when a weird near-sound floods the barracks and everyone groans. "What the hell is that?" he asks the rookie.

"Delta waves. They're new, they don't have them on ships yet. They're supposed to help us sleep."

"Do they?" he asks with real interest. She tightens her lips and shakes her head. Around them, troopers are kicking off boots and getting as comfortable as they can in the narrow bunks. "They haven't assigned me a detail yet," he says. "What time do you all go on shift?"

"0630. See you then, I guess." She heads for her bunk, and he lies down on his just as the lights dim.

The night is horrible. The too-familiar smells and sounds that were bad enough when he was sitting up and doing something are a thousand times worse when all he can do is think and wait and run scenarios in his head and try to make some of them not end with him dying in the armor he risked his life to shed, taking a space station full of people with him, betraying the people who make him want to live in the first place. And it's the first night in a long time that he's spent without Poe's breath on the back of his neck, Poe's weight and warmth beside him--the man is like a stove--and Poe's taste still in his mouth. He didn't realize how much he'd come to rely on that to get to sleep, and get back to sleep when the dreams hit. 

Nightmares are cheap in stormtrooper barracks, supposing he can even get as far as sleep; that won't blow his cover. But what if he calls Poe's name in his sleep, or Rey's? He has to sleep, but he can't sleep. He breathes, he breathes, he breathes. 

The wake-up sequence hits the speakers at 0630 and he's up and strapping on his armor before he even realizes he's awake, which means he must have slept at some point. Already he's questioning himself: will the automatic reactions, the responses to years and years of training and conditioning, save him or kill him here? He only has a few short cycles of freedom to balance against them; if he needs that to be enough, will it? By the time he's had this train of thought, he's rinsed his mouth with a swig from someone else's bottle of tooth wash, jammed on his helmet and queued up for the lift. A corporal's voice comes over the speakers telling them to report to the blaster range for practice--that's a relief, that he can handle--and he's about to file in when he hears, "TS-2284, report to Captain Barca in Sector 4 Deck 17 Room 20 for further debriefing."

Shitfire. He makes his way as slowly as he dares, partly to memorize more of the layout and partly because he doesn't want to face whatever's waiting for him at the end of this walk. Tiesse had spoken to him specifically about Barca; they knew each other. "A real rules guy," they'd said, but in a touchy way, like he has something to prove. So Finn should probably be deferential. Compliant. Humble, even. Shit. 

Tiesse: their quick mind, their wry awareness of the giant trap they were caught in, their deep-rooted love for someone else, were probably not what they showed their so-called superiors. If they could do it, so can he. 

Captain Barca is in uniform but no helmet, sagging cheeks and gray-brown skin that would probably be gold-brown if he ever got out under planetary sun. Finn salutes. "At ease, trooper. Glad to have you back with us."

"Thank you, sir," Finn says in his best TS-2284 impression. 

Barca glances at a datapad on his desk. "There were sixteen of you on that transport, is that right, and you were bound for this station?"

"A rendevous with Star Destroyer 506 first, sir, and then for this station, that's right." 

"Eight TS designations and eight XP designations. That XP trooper who doesn't talk, he survived with you?"

"Yes, sir. We both made it into the same escape pod."

"Those pods aren't meant for two, trooper."

"I know that, sir. I couldn't push him out." Let Barca take that however he wants. But don't speak up anymore, he thinks, don't volunteer, this man won't like that. "We have to know them, but they don't have to know us," he remembers Tiesse saying.

"The two of you could've made a run for it," Barca says, eyeing him. "Everyone thought 419C blew with all hands on board." Finn doesn't say anything, because everything he can think of to say has the potential to sound like insubordination, and the more he talks, the more chances Barca has to compare what he remembers with what he's hearing now. "Well, trooper?"

"Desert, sir? Where would we have gone?" He thinks that's right, the hint of dependency on the First Order, the implication that no one would take in a stormtrooper--the galactically despised strike force, killers from childhood, brainwashed, barely human. The cognizance that the First Order is the only home a stormtrooper has, the only place a stormtrooper can go. Anyway, Barca seems satisfied with it. "Well, you're here now, so you'd better get back to the grind, at least for the next few cycles. There's no TS troops here now, but XP unit's in 17 Barrack if you'd rather bunk with them. Their assignments come through me." 

"What would you rather, sir?" 

Too much? "Do that," Barca says. Apparently not. "And trooper. There's been some suggestion that Resistance presence in that sector wasn't an accident. Keep an eye on XP unit for me. Dismissed."

*

Day three of ten, about halfway through his exercise routine, Poe punches the wall of the freighter as hard as he can. It's the part where they keep the fire blankets, so all he does is break the skin on his knuckles, not the knuckles themselves. Eya glances over, but all she says is, "Act like you're grown, please, Dameron," and Iolo tosses him a medkit. 

"I don't need that," he mutters, tossing it back, and sucks his knuckles; they taste like blood and black dust, the stale particulate that gathers in ship air no matter how good your filters are. Iolo walks it over to him this time. "Throw a bacta patch on it at least," he says gently. "None of us like this shit."

He's right, and Poe knows it, so he thanks Iolo and patches his right hand up as well as he can with his left. Being a pilot, at least a Resistance pilot, doesn't usually involve a lot of waiting around; the others are antsy too, and he just wasn't paying attention. He tries to say some of this to Rey later when they climb into the TIE fighter for the night and she asks what happened--she was in the freighter control room monitoring systems for Eya when he hit the wall. "Normally when shit's going down we're in the middle of it, we're flying through it, we're making it happen. You can't stop, and none of it's going to stop until you get out of it or you die. When something's wrong you do something, you move toward it. This is just--we're just sitting here while Finn's down there, and anything could be happening to him, and we just have to sit here, and it's making me nuts."

Silence from her side for a while. Then finally, "It's worse for you, I think. Because you're usually out in the front of the front."

He exhales. "Yeah. Something like that."

"We are doing something, though. We're waiting for Finn."

"I'm sorry, but that sounds like Jedi double-talk. Waiting isn't doing."

"'Course it is," she says. "What would it be like for Finn if we weren't here?" She lets that sink in a while before she says, "I'm scared too. And it gives us time to be scared, so it's worse." 

"Yeah." More silence. "You're not...doing anything, are you? That's twice you've been right."

"You mean, am I using the Force to read your feelings against your will? Like a torturer? No, Poe, I'm not doing anything." She presses everything in herself together, hard: her palms, her lips, her knees, and then deliberately lets her anger go on a harsh breath, almost a hiss. "If you push it down and down," Luke said, "it'll just compress, like a spring, and it'll leap out when you least expect it. Note it and release it. Not at a target. Just outward." 

"Not even when I'm in a fight?"

"Especially not then. When you're in a fight, your anger is a weapon that can just as easily help your opponent as help you." He sighed then, she remembers, and scratched in his beard. "I wish I could say that you weren't going to have to fight any more," he said. "That you don't have to know what to do, because it won't come up. But I don't think that's true."

"Sorry, Poe," she says now. "I shouldn't have said that to you."

"I shouldn't have punched the wall," he says back, and though it's indirect, she understands. "I can take first watch if you want," she offers, which is already, three days in, code between them for I don't think I can sleep. 

Because the truth is that more than once between D'Qar and the shadow of this stupid frozen rock, she's looked at Poe's set jaw or fixed gaze or even just the slope of his neck and been tempted to just listen a little harder, just to know a little more. Just to be a little closer. "If you find yourself talking yourself into using this power," Luke had said to her, almost the first day they moved from arguing about whether he would train her to actual training, "that's an almost foolproof sign that you should be talking yourself out of it instead." 

She wishes she could hear his voice, feel his tired calm presence. She had plenty of accidental teachers of harsh lessons on Jakku, and a few in passing--women, mostly--whose terse words had helped her save her own life. But no one's ever been her teacher, or her anyone. Which is why it's damn important that she not betray his trust, and not misuse her power, and keep her mind to herself. 

*

It's his fourth day on the station, and Finn has learned a few more things. Snoke's definitely not here. Hux isn't here. Kylo Ren isn't here, and at least some of the rumors suggest that all three of them are in the same place, which isn't great news for the Resistance but is fairly comforting to one ex-stormtrooper, as long as that place isn't here. It's reflected, he thinks, in the way people go about their work: they're disciplined and sharp and as unthinking as possible, but they're not teetering on a knife-edge the way they were on the Finalizer.

Phasma is also not here, and in a way, that's even more comforting. The last time he saw her, he almost lost control--it burns him to think of it. He doesn't know how he'd do if he were to see her again, in that chrome armor the mere sight of which has filled him with terror and sick awe since he was fifteen and transferred to her command. And she's got a grudge now--that moment when he went out of his way to humiliate her could cost everyone on this station their life. 

That's the other thing, the thing he's firmly decided not to think about as with the other troopers in XP unit he does blaster drill and supply check and maintenance chores and all the gruntwork of keeping a habitat for humans functioning in the black of space; as he talks quietly with this person or that, asking questions that (he hopes) seem innocuous but that (he hopes) are reminding them of the layers of their minds that haven't been scarred into submission; as he nods to XP-0193, back with his unit and to all appearances content; as he watches every flicker of every gesture that might turn into something that would cause him to press the transmitter lodged just under the skin of his wrist, between segments of armor, where he can reach it in a second with his other hand or by wedging it against something. One press is the signal that he's ready for Eya to steer the freighter within range and for Poe to bring the TIE fighter into one of the bays where he'll be waiting, take him and XP-0193 onboard, and stage a reprise of their greatest escape. 

Three presses are the signal that he's been caught, that the First Order knows who he is and what he's doing there or are about to find out. If that happens, the rest of the team will take TIE fighters and hit the station with everything they've got, but not until Eya sets the autopilot to crash into the station at speed, before Finn tells the First Order everything he knows about the Resistance. And he'll be a murderer. Again. But this time, he won't have to live with it. 

Once or twice over the past few days, caught up in pattern and familiarity and the little urgencies of military life, he's caught himself thinking: maybe I just should've stayed. Some of these troopers have never seen combat, never held even one other person's lives in their hands. Maybe if he'd stayed he would have done, on balance, less damage. Always known what he was supposed to do. Grown to fear less, care less, matter less. 

No, he wouldn't trade it. But the constant startle reactions are wearing on him, and having to hide them--getting called for reconditioning would be as bad as being discovered--makes it worse. Conscious stormtroopers are pretty low in affect, even in the barracks where someone who didn't know better might expect that they'd cut loose. 

Which is what makes the cautious pat on his back-shield so surprising. He almost turns and hits whoever it is, but reins in the reaction and hears a voice say, "Doubles? They said you were back, but I didn't believe it."

Finn glances at their designation, XP-0180, and digs in his memory. "Turnaround?" he tries in TS-2284's voice, and is rewarded with another, harder slap. "Good to see you alive and well." 

"Same to you but more of it." The man's body language says he's happy to see the person he thinks Finn is. What did Tiesse say about Turnaround--was he one of the people they thought deconditioning might work on? Must've been, or they wouldn't have mentioned him. He says, "Come help me unload these fuel cells and tell me what's been going on." 

Turnaround is by far the chattiest stormtrooper Finn's ever met, and in minutes he's filled Finn in on the plans for the space station, which include using it as a base of expansion into the next system over and as a training site for new "recruits." If Turnaround is right, the base will become a large-scale factory for transforming kidnapped children into compliant soldiers so they can kidnap more children. Turnaround doesn't sound cheerful about this, but he doesn't sound distressed either; it's just what's going to happen next.

Finn forces his hands to unclench from the pallet he's moving. There's more than one possibility here. Turnaround could be mistaken--the rumor mill in any military force is powerful and mutagenic. Or he could be lying. Keep an eye on XP unit for me, Captain Barca'd said: was he the one lying? Does one of them know who Finn is; do both of them? Are they at odds or working together? For a hot second he lets himself entertain the idea that Turnaround is already a Resistance agent, that he and XP-0913 have a true ally here that they didn't expect; then that slides sickeningly into its inverse, because what if XP-0193 had actually been trying to get him back into First Order hands the whole time, is waiting for just the right moment to turn him in, and what if Tiesse--his reason and his gut both reject that, but that could just be because he doesn't want it to be true.

He's fighting vertigo and listening and hoping he looks normal, filing details (he can always check them later) and keeping an ear out for an opening, when the shift-change buzzer goes and it's time for them to go to mess, which is, of course, the other place where stormtroopers are allowed to--in fact, have to--take their helmets off. 

*

Sixth night. Rey's on watch. If she concentrates, she can hear Poe breathing evenly in the pilot's chair. When she realizes how hard she's listening, she tries to drop into Force meditation, but her mind keeps being drawn back to Finn--not what he's doing now, but Finn in the days before they left D'Qar. His arms around her when she stepped out of the Millenium Falcon, his face locked in effort in the training room or trapped in panic at the end of a strategy meeting, his chest pressed to hers and slick with sweat, his hands gripping her thighs... Moving as little and as silently as possible, she slides a hand inside the waistband of her trousers and her underdrawers as she did so many times when no one else had ever touched her, shivers as her index finger finds just the right angle. She deliberately brings back Finn's awed gasp when she peeled off her breastband and the way his breathing roughened when he kissed her there, how it felt to look down at the dazed beauty of his face and feel him moving in her slowly, then faster, and all the sensation in her body gathers the way it gathered around his cock, just once, and then convulses, blooms out, collapses like a star. 

A gasp brushes past her ears and she's furious with herself for making any sound at all--but she hasn't. "You okay, Poe?" she calls softly. 

"What? Yeah. Yeah, fine. Just--dreaming. Is it my watch already?"

"I don't think so. It hasn't been very long, if you can get back to sleep."

"Okay, I'll try," he says, hoping he sounds normal, like a normally sleepy person, and not like somebody who just had one of the most intense erotic dreams of his life and came in his pants like a fourteen-year-old. He can't even remember the dream, and after a few unsuccessful attempts to reconstruct it he decides to be hygienic and lose the underwear rather than sleep in it. "Gotta hit the fresher first," he says, though who knows if she's even listening. 

Alone in the dim little chamber he leans his head against the cool wall and inquires, silently, what the hell is happening to him. Is this just his body's way of telling him it doesn't want to die? He knew that, for shit's sake. He runs his drawers ineffectively under the sonic showerhead, decides he can't face putting them back on, tosses them in the incinerator chute, rubs his face, and walks back out. Settles himself in the pilot's seat and tries to compose himself. It doesn't work. "I think I'm up for a while," he says, "if you wanna close your eyes."

"Sorry," she says. 

"It's not your fault. I'm just sick of waiting and thinking and being scared. Same as I was a few days ago, only with more days."

She's starting to suspect it was her fault, actually, and that's what makes her ask, "Do I scare you?"

Long pause. "A little," he says softly, and she's glad they can't see each other.

"Because of what I can do?"

"Because of what you can do, yeah. But that's part of who you are, right? You can't not do it." She waits. "And I know you...want to choose how you use it."

"You don't think I can?" There's an edge, one she didn't mean to put there.

"I don't know if anybody can. I don't just mean ... Ren," and she can tell it's an effort to even get the title out. "Look at Luke. I mean, I know he's your teacher, and he's a good man, but he took himself away from everybody because he didn't trust himself."

She feels the truth of that. It's one thing to scare yourself; it's another thing to scare someone else and then ask them to comfort you. "I'm so tired, Poe, and I'm so--sorry, and I'm so scared, and I can't sleep. Can we just--I wish we could just go in and get him."

And then he's comforting her anyway, she's so angry at herself, he's talking through the fear she knows he feels, and she can't even trust herself to tell if she's guessing or sensing or just believing what he said a minute ago: "Finn's really good, Rey, you know that, he's good at talking to people and he's smart and he's careful and he's gonna be fine. We just need to hang on for a few more days. Can I sing to you?"

"What?"

"Can I sing you a song? To help you sleep," he explains. 

"I...yeah. I guess so." That doesn't seem adequate, so she adds, "Yes please."

He hums for a few minutes, and she waits soundlessly, and he sings.

"Brujita, niña bruja   
mientras que duermes en los arboles  
no te arranques las estrellas  
todavía no están maduras..."

...And the next thing she hears is Rookie Lane's bone-cracking howl of a yawn, and the hum of the ship lights rising to simulate another day of waiting.

*

 

Finn has solved the problem of taking his helmet off to eat by not eating, and he's solved the problem of taking his helmet off in barracks by learning to sleep with the blanket over his face. Only three more days, he tells himself, I can do this, I can handle it for three more days.

The blanket makes him sweat. From under it, amplified by metal grid of the floor, he can hear seventy-nine people's snores and sleeping farts, and here and there a grunt or a muffled curse as someone seeks a little solace. Maybe it'll help me sleep, he thinks, and reaches down and tries to imagine that his hand is Poe's hand, that Rey is moving over him too like a live wire, why not--

\--And stops, because he realizes that he has no idea how Tiesse manages this part of their life. Understandably, it wasn't a major topic in their briefings. He knows they've loved someone, but not what form that love took; he doesn't know if they ever even want to do what he wants, so badly, right now, to do. He can't risk it. He tries to lie so that there's no weight or pressure anywhere near his dick; he bites his hand viciously, hoping the pain will distract him. It doesn't help much. Even telling himself that tomorrow could be the day they blow his cover, that he'll have to call in his own death warrant, makes him sick and miserable without reducing his hard-on in the slightest. 

So he's a little dizzy with hunger and even less well-rested than usual when the buzzer goes at 0630. He sits up with un-stormtrooper-like slowness and reaches for the various pieces of his armor like he's reaching through water, and it takes him a second to realize that Turnaround is staring at his face. "But you're not--" That's as far as Turnaround gets, because XP-0193 is already behind him with a forearm wedged against his windpipe. 

This wasn't part of any plan. There is no plan, and the silence and staring are spreading in both directions down the barracks. XP-0193 has prevented the first outcry but made it basically impossible for Finn to talk the situation down. He has seconds, no more. It's as though he's watching himself stand and walk to the barracks comm. "TS-2284 for Captain Barca," he says. "Request permission to take a trooper into custody per our conversation of three days ago. XP-0180 is behaving erratically and has been restrained."

The response comes quickly--"In my office--" though slowly enough for Finn to think about what he's set in motion. That was a genuine response; if anyone's playing him, it isn't Turnaround. Whether or not Finn was a traitor before, he is now, not to the First Order or any abstract notion of right and wrong but to a person who thought he was talking to a friend. He and XP-0193 march Turnaround into the lift, and XP-0193 lets up the pressure enough for Turnaround to blurt, "What the hell is going on? You're not TS-2284! Who are you?"

"Save it for the Captain," Finn says, staring straight ahead under his helmet. He'll play it through. They reach the officers' deck and the walk to Barca's door feels a thousand parsecs long. 

"Report, TS-2284," the Captain says, after a glance at the three of them.

"XP unit had just heard the 0630 shift buzzer and was preparing to move out," Finn says in TS-2284's voice, "when XP-0180 lunged at me without provocation and tried to attack me. He seems to think I'm someone I'm not. He may be delusional, or he may be trying to finish something he started when 419C went down." That's it. In with both feet. He stays at attention and fights the urge to hold his left wrist in his right.

"XP-0180? Let him talk, trooper."

"He's not TS-2284!" Turnaround spits. "He's someone else, I don't know who, but when I saw him with his helmet off I knew. Why don't you ask him what he's doing here and what he did with TS-2284? Why's he wearing their armor? Why don't you ask him what happened to 419C? Why don't you tell him to take his helmet off?"

Barca's heavy face tightens further into a frown and he leans over the comm bank on his desk. "Escort for three prisoners to Captain Barca's office, with restraints," he says. "Only one of you is telling the truth, and I'm going to find out which." Finn feels the blood draining from his face, leaving it numb. Barca would be stupid to let him walk out without a look under the helmet, and whatever the rank and file know or don't know, there's no way every officer in the First Order doesn't have a holo of his face on their wanted list. 

"TS-2284, remove that helmet," Barca says.

"Sir," Finn says, and undoes the clips at his neck. Somehow his hands are steady. He gets the helmet off and holds it in inspection position, chest level. Barca looks at him blankly and says, "Replace your helmet, trooper."

Finn doesn't understand what just happened, but it doesn't matter. On his way down to the cells, he wonders how many minutes of life he has left. If they get to the point of questioning him, they'll either kill or recondition him, and that will be that. He has to call in the pilots and Rey before that happens. Every person who turns their head to look or studiously avoids looking as the escorts walk him past will die. Poe, he thinks with everything left in him that isn't numb, Rey.

*

"Was that a song from your homeworld?" Rey asks between pushups. Poe's leaning against their fighter, picking at his hands. It's whatever time dawn would be if they were on a planet, on the seventh day.

"No--well, the language is. My mother spoke it, and a lot of people there speak it, about half. But I made up the words and the tune." 

"How do you say it in Basic?"

"Um." Poe seems to be concentrating very hard on his fingernails. "Little witch, sleeping in the trees, don't pick the stars, they're not ripe yet."

"Is that it?" 

"Is that it. I only came up with it last night. Gimme a little time."

"What do you mean, last night?"

"I told you, I made it up," Poe says. "By the time we're on our way back to D'Qar I'll have a couple more verses and a bridge."

Rey isn't sure what a bridge has to do with it, and she doesn't want to say what else she's wondering in case it's a mistake. And then thought vanishes entirely as her head echoes with the sound of her own name.

"Finn!" she gasps. "Something's wrong." Her head clears partway. "Poe, something's wrong. We have to get him out."

"Hold on. How do you know? The transmitter didn't go."

"He called me. Don't ask stupid questions! We have to go now."

"Rey, be smart. If we just go in cold, how will we find him? We need a new plan. I get that we need it fast, but we need it."

"New plan." New plan. The others have gathered at the urgency in her voice and are watching her. Her eyes roll over the interior of the freighter as if there might be instructions written there, and snag on the black folds of the fire blankets. 

"Lane, get those down for me," she says, pointing. "Eya, do we still have those clogged filters we changed? Iolo, dig me out some engine grease, and that laser knife you were using yesterday." Her voice rings with command, and as they disperse she undoes her tunic and trousers. Poe stares. "What are you doing?"

"Becoming someone else," Rey says, and before either of them can think about it she pushes him up against the flank of their TIE fighter and presses her mouth hard to his. 

He gets over being stunned fast and brings a hand up to her waist, the other to cradle her head and keep her there, in the center of the kiss, her lips urgent and searching, his pulse through the roof. Then she shrugs free. "I don't want you to watch me do this," she says in a low voice. "Take the gunner's seat and don't turn around. I'll take us out." 

"Can you do it?" He's already complying, climbing in, and he doesn't want to think about that at all.

"Like we practiced," she says over the sound of ripping cloth and the others' footsteps. Poe smells engine grease and black dust. "Eya," he says, because somebody has to think about these things, "if you don't see us on our way back in a standard hour or so, do as much damage as you can with only two fighters and the autopilot, and get out quick. And if you do see us, go to lightspeed as soon as you can." 

She nods, quick, firm, and goes to brief the others. He feels the fighter rock a little as Rey takes the pilot's chair, and the smells of grease and dust intensify--what the hell did she do? The engine powers up; the others retreat to the inner bay and lower the airlock. "Liftoff in three, two..."

On the way in, she tells him a little bit more about her plan, which is terrible.

*

"Up," says the stormtrooper, RL-4001, someone Finn doesn't know. 

He's been on the floor of the cell for he doesn't know how long, but more like hours than days. At first he paced. Then he did exercises. Then he thought about pressing his wrist three times. Then he cried. Then he sat down with his back against the wall, as if to think, but there was nothing to think about. 

"Up," repeats the newcomer, gesturing with his blaster. 

Well. This is it. It's been nice, being alive, being free. He still wouldn't trade it. 

He knows the interrogation chambers are toward the lower point of the station--"the Needle," the troopers call it--and is surprised, in a distant way, when instead his guard thumbs the lift upward, toward the docks. "You must be a bigger deal than we thought," the guard says, half sneering, half grudgingly respectful. "The Supreme Leader wants to have a chat with you. The Knights of Ren themselves are coming to pick up you and your no-tongue buddy."

Cold fury fills him, followed by a kind of glee. If his last living act is to take another shot at Kylo Ren, he really will consider his life well spent. He strategizes: could he grab RL-4001's blaster? Push Kylo Ren over the edge of the deck, down into the well of the Needle?

The transmitter. The signal to attack. That's it. Once he sees that stupid mask, he'll press his wrist three times, and if he's going to make himself a mass murderer again, at least he'll take another mass murderer with him. They're almost at the docks, and he's still cuffed; he'll have to try to stand near something he can knock his wrist on. 

Only the person who steps out of the TIE fighter isn't Kylo Ren. It's a woman, with a contorted tower of black-slicked hair and glittering black-smudged eyes, bulky black robes and dusty black veils, striding toward him (and toward XP-0193, in the custody of another trooper) with a contempt that punctuates the metal of the deck with every step she takes. 

It's Rey.

"Sarai Ren," she says to Barca and a couple of other captains who are standing at uneasy attention, and her voice too sounds metallic. "I'm here to conduct these two prisoners to the Supreme Leader." 

"In a TIE fighter?" says a captain Finn doesn't know, sounding skeptical. 

Rey skewers him with a glare. "The Supreme Leader's been looking for them for a long time," she says. "I took the first available opportunity to get here, and I'm sure you'll understand that I don't want to keep him waiting." 

"Lady Ren," Barca says, "you honor us with your visit. Please forgive me for asking, but why didn't you send a comm ahead of you? We'd have been happy to provide you with transport, and an escort." He takes a step toward her and stops--is stopped, like he's hit a wall, as Rey gestures with her hand palm-out. "Not too close," she snaps. "Let's get these traitors out of here. Put that one in with my gunner--" she flicks another gesture at XP-0193--"and this one in with me. He's more dangerous, I want him close by." 

They manhandle Finn into the cockpit. There'll barely be room. "Thank you, Captains," Rey is saying. "I'll be sure to tell the Supreme Leader how efficient and cooperative you were. Drop that airlock for me, troopers." And then she's beside him, wedging him over and smelling like the floor of an elderly ship, and the engines vibrate into life. "Gunner, liftoff in three, two, one." 

A whoop of elation escapes from three of the four people in the TIE fighter as they clear the First Order space station. Rey takes them over the asteroid shadow where Eya waits and as soon as she's sure they've seen her, punches the coordinates for the Ileenium system. Around them, the stars blur into streaks of fire.

They break atmo just a few seconds ahead of Eya and the freighter, and Rey takes them down to the Resistance landing field. Finn's side is pressed against hers and he can feel her trembling. There wasn't enough room for him to take his helmet off, and she, of course, is still in her disguise. Poe hasn't said anything yet except Finn's name, at intervals and at different volumes. 

A crowd's already gathering--probably started when Poe relayed the latest entry codes to Rey and she transmitted them to the sentries. "You better get out first," Finn says quietly. "Give me a chance to get this helmet off." 

"Probably you should say who you are," Poe adds, his tone cold. "In case they can't tell."

Rey's lips tighten, but she climbs down, calling, "It's me! It's Rey. I had to pretend to be a Knight of Ren for a minute, that's why I look like this, sorry." By this time the other three have disembarked, and about a quarter of the Resistance is staring at Finn and XP-0193 in their stormtrooper armor, Poe in his disheveled eight-day clothes and Rey looking more grubby than regal now that she's not putting on her act. "We're here," she whispers. "We got back. We made it." 

General Organa comes to the front of the crowd. Her face seems to be trying to hold three or four expressions at once. "Anything I need to act on right away?" she asks.

"No ma'am," Finn and Poe say at the same time. 

"Then the orders for all four of you are to go clean up and rest. Debriefing in three hours. Welcome back." 

XP-0193 turns toward the quarters he shares with Tiesse. The other three head for Finn's quarters as if they'd discussed it, but they don't discuss it; they don't say one word on the way there. The silence feels like something gripping them, holding them apart. Even when they're inside, it doesn't let them go until Poe says, still not looking at her, "Rey, I'd take it as a favor if you'd lose the gear." 

"Sure," she says, pulling the laser knife from her belt and slicing a few cords, and standing there in her breastband and drawers. "Better?"

Finn can't breathe all of a sudden. He's only seen her like this once before. He looks at Poe instead, to see his face stricken and eyes dark with heat. That makes it--not worse, but more. "Much better," Poe says hoarsely, not reaching for her, looking as if he'd like to. 

She says in a slightly panicked tone, "I have to get this grease out of my hair, be right back," and beats it for the fresher. Finn and Poe are left looking at each other. "I thought," Finn says, and Poe says his name another time, and then says it closer, softly, against his mouth. 

They've managed to get rid of the armor and most of their clothes when Rey comes back in, scrubbed pink and smelling like soap and with a mat of hair like a Wookiee cub. She stands braced in the doorway for a long breath until Poe says, "Come on," and Finn adds, "If you want," each of them holding out an arm to her, and she says, "Oh," and folds herself into them. 

It's wonderful to be close to them, to both of them, it's everything Finn was longing for and thought he'd never have again, and for a while he just floats on that. But there's a feeling of strain and determination that goes beyond the logistics of three bodies--maybe it's just because it's their first time all three together? His back is to the wall and Rey's back is to his chest and each movement of Poe's hand, as he kneels between her spread legs, rocks her back on Finn's cock and it's so good, but there's something missing, or damped down, something lying in wait--

"Don't hold back," Poe says to Rey, specifically and intently to Rey, tilting her chin up with his other hand, "I want to feel you--" and then the wave hits, almost too intense to be called pleasure, knocking Finn's eyes back in his head and his head back against the wall, shaking him again and again. The next thing he's truly aware of is Poe collapsing forward, Rey between them, and resting there, like the three of them have fused into one.

*

Poe and Iolo and Karé Kun and Rookie Lane are drinking, because they didn't die. "What's with the long face, Dameron?" Karé demands. "We got your boyfriend out and we didn't even have to shoot anybody." 

"Just reaction," he lies. "If you could've seen me when Rey was putting on her act--I almost shit my pants."

"Seeing her putting on that outfit was good enough," Lane says. "I'd let her Force choke me. Ow, Iolo, come on, you would too." 

"Don't joke about that," gentle Iolo says. "Rey's not that kind of person."

Isn't she? Poe wonders. Is she? They'd untangled themselves from the afterglow and dressed in fresh clothes--he's taken to keeping a change in Finn's room, and Rey made do with her breastband, Finn's spare pants, and a belt. Poe almost made them late by detangling her hair while she sat naked and tense, looking far away. He'd braided it around her head, and the General had raised her eyebrows just a little when they walked in together. "Finn first," she said, "report," and her face had turned grave as she listened. "I have to give all of this some thought, and talk with some people," she said finally. "Expect a new briefing by sundown tomorrow. Rey"--this with an appraising look--"you should find Luke and get back to your practicing. It's not good to miss too much."

Poe thinks of Rey's determination, her discipline, her sincerity. He thinks of her footsteps on metal, the steel of command in her voice, the cold glint in her eyes above the smears of darkness. He remembers getting into the gunner's seat almost before the instruction was out of her mouth, and before that, for dazzling seconds, that same mouth on his till he couldn't see straight. He's getting hard here, at the table, thinking about the way she made him--made him--feel. He thinks she's not exactly doing it on purpose. And that's what worries him. 

*

Rey finds Luke in the training room in meditation pose and joins him, grateful for his calm, feeling it seep into her bones. When he rises, she does too, and they begin their exercises: she moves what he tells her to move, she senses his place in the room. "You're not making it," he reminds her. "It already exists. You're just directing it, concentrating it."

"I want to control it better," between her teeth as she blocks the free weights he's lobbing at her and floats them to the floor. "To hold it back more. Are there exercises for that?"

"Tell me what you want the control for, and I might be able to help."

That's the last thing she wants to do. Maybe an expurgated version. "How do you keep--when you're--being, uh, passionate with somebody, how do you keep it from affecting them too? Not the passion. The Force. Or I mean, the passion with the Force, if you see what I mean."

"I see what you mean," Luke says seriously, even a little sadly. Rey risks a glare. "Is this where you tell me that a Jedi isn't supposed to love anybody?"

"I don't have any plans to tell you that," Luke says, "mostly because I don't think it's true. Let's sit down. I do think that a Jedi should probably tell the people she loves what she's doing to them."

"Poe knows," she says defensively, hugging her knees, and blushes hot to think of how she knows he knows.

"Because you told him or because he guessed?"

"He guessed," she admits. "And Finn doesn't know yet. It's not like I'm taking their thoughts, I'm not taking anything--" She breaks off, remembering what Luke's said about self-justification, but he's already looking at her with the expression she absolutely hates, patiently waiting for her to hang herself with her own rope. For her to disappoint him. What would he think if he knew how she felt when she staved off a First Order captain with a gesture of her will? I saved us with what I did, I got us out of there, if it weren't for me Finn would have died.

"You see," Luke says, and she wonders for a panicked moment if he felt an echo of her memory or is just responding to what she said aloud, "it isn't just a question of love. It's a question of power. So really it's a question of fear: who can do what to whom, and will they, and when."

*

Finn finds Tiesse in the gardens, rooting out weeds with deft twists. "You made it," they say.

"I made it," he agrees. "Which ones are the ones we want to leave?"

They touch two kinds of melon seedlings with a dirt-encrusted finger. "Everything else can go," they say. "I hate to pull them out, though. They're plants too."

"That sounds like something Rey would say." He knows he's dragging her into the conversation, but he wants to say her name as often as possible. "She got us out. She was incredible."

"XP-0193 told me," they say. 

"Where is he?" Usually the two are together if they can be. 

"Sleeping. He didn't tell me a lot." Conversation with XP-0193 is slow, and involves a lot of questions and waiting on the other person's end, even when the other person is Tiesse, who knows him best. "Do you wanna say more?"

"If you wanna hear it. I didn't want to--take you back to it."

"I'd like to hear," they say, so he walks them through it but watches them carefully, noting their reactions so he can stop if they start to slip back, like they did sometimes during the briefing sessions. When he mentions Captain Barca he sees their hand tremble a little, as if toward a salute, but otherwise they do pretty well until he gets to the part with Turnaround. "I remember him," Tiesse says. "He was... all right. He had my back a couple times when I needed it."

"He was glad to see me, when he thought I was you. And then he found out I wasn't you, and he tried to tell Barca, and I had to pretend he was the one who--who was a traitor. They probably know he isn't by now, but..."

"Reconditioning," they say. "Because he talked to you." 

"Probably." 

One thing he's come to appreciate about Tiesse is that they never try to say something's okay when it's not. They pull a few more weeds and add them to a pile forming next to them. After a while they say, "Did you help anyone?"

Help. What a strange word for what he was trying to do. And yet he knows that's the way Tiesse sees it. "I think so," he says. "It was hard to tell. I didn't have as much time as--as you and I had, and it wasn't safe for them to show anything. But I think at least two people seemed like they might be... changing. And what was weird, there was a third person, in the same unit as one of the two, who I barely talked to at all, but who I overheard talking, and it seemed like they might be, too. It was just a feeling. I could've been imagining it. There was another weird thing," and he realizes he forgot to tell the General this. "When I was trying to talk my way out with Barca, he told me to take my helmet off, and I was like, This is it, they'll know I'm not them--you, I mean. But he just stared at me for a second and told me to put it back on."

"I told you," they say. "We aren't real to them. Or we are, but the way a blaster is real. You don't care which one you use. He didn't know you weren't me because he didn't know I was me." 

"They'll probably recondition them anyway," he says. "The people I talked to."

"Maybe." A fat waterdrop splatters the dirt by the weedpile, and Finn feels another on the back of his neck. "Let's get inside," Tiesse says. "It's hard to work in mud." 

"Tell me about what you did while we were gone," he suggests as they make for the low building where their quarters are. "You weren't gardening yet when I left."

"Oh, well, I had to do something," they say. "No one was asking me questions that made me feel like I was choking to death." They see the face he can feel he's making and touch his wrist lightly, near the scab where he dug the transmitter out with Rey's belt knife, the place that's exposed when a stormtrooper's in armor. "And I've been doing some work in the weapons shop for Hadrian. I figure I owe him for doing my hair. He likes to talk to me about his kids and his nephews, and he calls me 'kid' too."

"Does it bother you?"

"No, it's nice. He means it nice."

"I thought about you while I was on the space station," Finn says. "Obviously I did, because I was trying to be you, but also about what you've done. So far. It made a big difference."

They look at him oddly. "That's good," they say. "Make sure it's really me, though. The one you're thinking of. I was talking to the old one about that." 

"Skywalker?"

"You said to go to him if anything was wrong, so I thought maybe I could go to him even if nothing was wrong. Or nothing--outside." They make a motion indicating that the trouble was somewhere around the region of their heart.

"Did he say anything... helpful?"

They look at him almost compassionately, their eyes like pools of clear brown water in their brown face. "He said we all have a long way to go."


End file.
